“For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man, and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.” —Eugene V. Debs

Monday, February 1, 2010

Look! It's Monday!

What Kage Baker told her sister on her last day: "I want you to tell all these people that I wanted more time to spend with them. Tell them I meant to, tell them I wanted to hear what they said and tell them what was on my mind."

Another thing I need to say more often: "Not my concern." Which means I won't rant about the Great Amazon-Macmillan Ebook War. Well, except to say this: The capitalists who like to profit from high prices have defeated the capitalists who like to profit from many sales. Macmillan's position is good for rich authors and publishers who pay rent in Manhattan, but bad for people who buy ebooks. Since I'm not in any of those camps, well, "Not my concern."

As the elderly white woman approached the four black students at the Woolworth's whites-only lunch counter, Franklin McCain braced for the worst.

"I was thinking to myself, she must have knitting needles and scissors in that handbag of hers and they're about to go right through me," McCain recalled. "I mean, we were invading her space, a space we were told we could not inhabit."

Fifty years ago Monday, McCain and three other freshmen at North Carolina A&T University took a stand by sitting at the lunch counter in the national chain's Greensboro, North Carolina, store.

The store had no qualms selling toothpaste or light bulbs to blacks, but a cup of coffee at the lunch counter? Out of the question. The Greensboro Four, as they came to be known, were fed up.

Instead of pulling a knitting needle on the young men, the woman placed her hand on McCain's shoulder and smiled warmly.

"She says, 'Boys, I am so proud of you. I only regret that you didn't do this 10 years ago,' " McCain said.

ETA: The "Screw You" article has errors about publishing (see Emma's comment here). But that doesn't change how Macmillan's fight for higher prices is seen by many readers...including this reader.